Vertigo
by HoshisamaValmor
Summary: Palermo thinks about Andrés / Berlin.


A little language trivia for an Author's Note: 'Palerma' means 'fool', 'dumb' in Portuguese. It's an adjective used for both male and female names, so yeah, 'Palermo' ended up having an extra meaningful tone for his city alias :)

lol that being said, I like controversial characters and his actor's performance and so the mandatory little fic started to quickly form in my head.

This fic also has a version in portuguese.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately I do not own a single thing of La Casa de Papel.

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That 'love at first sight' thing is bullshit. 'Hard-on at first sight' was acceptable. Immediate empathy... Martín wouldn't put it in those exact terms because it already started to sound too much female-like, and if even the word 'empathy' already sounded like that to him, then certainly the phrase 'love at first sight' would never come out of his mouth, or be understood and interpreted as such.

'Brothers', on the other hand, yes. 'Brothers at first sight'.

...fuck, what a dumbass.

But Martín and Andrés _had_ felt empathy at first or second sight. The partnership and connection that two people who have a lot in common feel, without any other feeling or complication shaking the whole thing up. To simply recognize their own qualities in somebody else and mutually admire each other - of course they would, those qualities included a healthy dosage of egocentrism. Andrés loved to steal and was stupidly good at it. Martín loved the adrenaline rush of planning and executing a perfect robbery. Both loved how 'perfection' included risks and those risks were a lot more exciting than most of other life's pleasures.

Andrés had good taste in almost everything, and Martín was a close second, but sometimes it was hard to tell how far Andrés' taste actually influenced Martín in his wardrobe or drinking choices; not that that was a bad thing, at all. Spend a lot of time together with someone and inevitably some of the other's mannerisms will start to mirror, to pull, to entwine themselves, and it becomes considerably irrelevent who is acting more like whom (but both of them knew; and even so, what did it matter, if Andrés had such a clear magnetism? And for someone supposely homophobic, any word spoken by Andrés was yet to ignite any spark of offence in Martín's chest.)

He had good taste in_ almost_ everything. Not everything. Of course, Andrés was an irredeemable womanizer that thought he had found the love of his life every time he stared at a woman for more than five seconds. But we all have faults, and at the end of the day, even that worked to bond the two of them and solify their friendship; Martín would keep up with the developments of Andrés romantic-dramatic soap opera-life like a mediumly invested viewer, and he was always there to roast and criticize every single thing when Andrés and him would drown their problems on the aftermaths of Andrés' failed marriages and relationships.

"You're a sexist misogynistic, Martín."

"Look who's talking."

"Me? I love women."

"Uh-uh, sure you do. As you see, it does you absolute wonders."

"Aah, you're worst than my little brother. When you two discover the wonders of true love, you'll see."

"Oh but of course. You can keep all the women in the world. You're even worst then them with that ridiculous romanticism of yours, Andrés. You're a complete dumbass."

They always ended up singing and dancing and drinking like brothers.

But of course they weren't. Andrés had a brother, a total fishcake that wasn't even good for neither a womanizer or gay, but fuck, what a head on those shoulders. A little genius that could brush both of them to the corner. But his vision was so different from theirs; he was such a different brother. But that one, he was a _real_ brother, and those two had that _family_ thing to tie them together.

We all have faults.

Of course he took Andrés. Of course Andrés went. The little brother's plan was so much better, so much more studied, (...so much more boring), so much more risky than theirs was, as grand or even greater than theirs.

... and Martín had to admit, it was brilliant. He wasn't just egocentric; he was a connoisseur of art. And that heist was art.

He didn't leave the television for the entirety of the italian coverage of the event, hacked the spanish channels and followed on the computer, and was almost seriously furious at Sergio for having not deemed him good enough to join the gang. Andrés wouldn't shut up for _years to come_ about it, and the truth was he'd have every single right not to shut up. Every hour brought some new development or complication and only made Martín wonder how much _more_ was actually happening behind the scenes of it all.

But everything has an end, and when they reached it, reality clenched itself to Martín so ruthlessly and so cruelly that it made him realize, for the first time in his life, that he suffered with constant vertigo. And that he ignored it, and ignored it, and that it all now came to take their toll all at once.

That unbalance, that cold hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach, that unpleasant feeling of dizziness. The notion you are about to fall because you've lost control and sense. Normally, people will try to find support at that moment, something or someone that will hold them and give them a sense of safety to show them it was nothing but a passing, a light feeling. Martín had been doing it so many times without even thinking, that now that he realized he couldn't, blood froze in his body and he fell on his knees.

The support, the safety Martín had, was in Spain, in the Royal Mint, and the newschannel started to blare out that he had been shot dead by the police.

The vertigo Martín felt at that moment didn't vanish. He didn't have anyone to hold on to, no one to stop him from falling. The same exact thing that caused vertigo, that made him lose control and feel dizzy, was whom he held on to not lose control. Whom he held on to for safety.

What did he expect to come out of that paradox?

Why? Why had he been so afraid to lose control if he already had from the get-go? He had been falling this whole time and he pretended he wasn't, thinking he could control it and pretend it'd be over, just a passing, light feeling. Pretend it wasn't even there, ignore it,

Before he even entered in denial, the first thing that locked his mind was that thought:

'Love at first sight' is bullshit.

...fuck, what a dumbass.

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the end

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Author's Note: For the third consecutive year, I write and publish a story on the day of Chester's passing.

Thank you for reading.


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